The Sign-In Logbook at Dawn

Dear Delyara, I signed my name in the guardroom exit logbook at 6:00 AM today, my handwriting looking like a series of jagged, pathetic scratches on the cheap white paper. Looking at the long column of dates and signatures extending back for months, it hit me with a terrifying clarity that my entire life is being recorded as a series of twelve-hour blocks of nothingness. I am trading the prime creative years of my body for a steady check, letting my true potential rot in the dark while I watch over empty hallways. The fear that this uniform has become my actual skin, and that I will never take it off, is a suffocating shadow that won't leave me even when the sun comes up.